


Truth

by taichara



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:29:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The king discovers what awaits him after the final duel.  </p>
<p>Sins of the past cannot be erased, no matter what one may do to change oneself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alecto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alecto/gifts).



At first, there was nothing. Nothing but brilliant blinding white; there was nothing but that endless bright void, and – despite himself – Atem felt the need to shiver. This was not anything he had expected, for the end …

_Am I to exist not-existing forever, then? Is that my fate?_

A heartbeat passed, or perhaps a thousand; then the featureless void became to clear, just as he felt he could take the emptiness no longer. The sense of dark stony passages – a corridor? a cave? a tomb? – seeped through the blinding haze, and the brilliance condensed itself into the shape of a baroque and forbidding lupine beast bedecked in gold. The dire First of the Westerners.

The creature lowered its head and fixed its empty gaze upon Atem.

_: Follow me. :_

And, seeing no other option, the dead king did so.

-*-

The stone-like mirage did not last long. Light, true light, flared into existence without warning – the flickering of phantom torches, the glow of a vast sea of flame beyond – and Atem saw all at once where the Westerner had led him. The soaring pillars of the Hall of Two Truths loomed all around him, its ceiling lost in all-encompassing blackness, the grim Lake of Fire somehow visible through the walls.

The Westerner faded from sight with a ghostly howl; Atem bit back a remark about being abandoned to his fate.

_This is not the place for quips or sarcasm …_

No, indeed. Not with those ranks of gods with their beastly eyes and burning orbs and inhuman faces – grasping serpents, clutching knives like half-moons, muttering, growling, chittering – all leaning forward in their scaly thrones to take the measure of this small slip of dead mortal that found his way into the Hall. 

With effort, Atem wrenched away his gaze from the waiting ranks to stare the length of the court. There, there he was –

Enthroned, inhuman, expressionless. To his right, Horus the Falcon Paladin and his warrior-protector spawn; to his left, the Twin Sorceresses, Isis and Nephthys. Flanked by those seven as Atem had once been by his own priests, Osiris stared down dispassionately at the wayward king … and behind him danced his shadow on the wall, a writhing and many-jawed dragon.

Atem went cold.

_The same … he is the same … what now?_

_You’ll not be answering my call here!_

“Begin.”

One word, hollow and dark as a tomb, escaped the viridian lips, and before Atem’s eyes the glittering cedar-wood frame of the scales – the Scales! – ghosted into existence in the centre of the Hall. 

The twin ranks of judges shifted, though none rose from their perch. From the left padded Anubis, long-limbed and ebon, fangs set in an executioner’s grim smile as he approached the Scales to crouch, alert and waiting, to read the plumb-bob and seal Atem’s fate. From the right came Thoth, curved bill sharp as razors clacking, to stand and wait to record the outcome of the trial …

From the very flagstones seeped Ammut, monstrous and greedy, crocodile’s eyes fixed on Atem as if she knew he was already hers.

For a long moment Anubis’ feral gaze fixed onto Atem. The long ears twitched once, and then the Jackal Over The Captives drew one glistening white plume from the aether and placed it, delicately and deliberately, into one hanging golden pan.

Atem’s chest exploded in agony. Falling to one knee, he fought against the onrushing blackness, fought to stay upright … and when his vision finally cleared, he saw a heart -- _his_ heart, he knew, he _knew_ \-- cradled crimson and wet in the other pan of the Scales. Yet his flesh remained unmarked.

One breath, another …

The Scale wavered, shivered, all eyes upon it as its limbs canted back and forth and its burdens slid in their golden cradles. The Jackal watched the plumb-bob, traced its reading … and turned to the Lord of the Dead, ears pricked forward in silent question.

Osiris’ response was swift, and final.

“Begin the Negative Confession.”

As one the judges, two score and two, leaned once again towards Atem. Now it would all come out, one by painful one as Atem called on each and every one of the monstrous judges of the Hall to witness his words.

From the first, he knew.

_”I have not committed wrongdoing against anyone.”_

Five, and he felt damnation closing in.

_”I have not done evil.”_

The creak of the Scales’ slow movement downward pounded in his veins.

His own voice sounded foreign, some other speaker forming the words in his throat.  
Somehow, he continued to speak …

_”I have not caused pain.”_

_”I have not caused weeping.”_

The judges watched, vultures, jackals, carrion beetles, silent …

He wanted to scream, to plead lenience; to protest that it was that Dark One’s touch on him all those harrowed years that caused his sins, that he should not be judged for actions made when he did not even know himself …

But Atem held his tongue, and continued to speak.

Fourteen. The fourteenth –

_”I have not killed.”_

The sound of the Scales’ bloody pan striking the flagstones rang like a thousand thousand bells. In the silence that followed there was only the soft sound of Thoth’s reed against papyrus.

Condemned. Damned.

Anubis climbed out of his crouch, Ammut’s grotesquerie alongside him as he stalked toward the silent king –

“Hold.”

Everything stopped.

Atem dared to lift his eyes to the Lord of the Dead.

Osiris held his scepter out in command, as if holding his executioners at bay with that warped, enameled crook.

“Hold. The deceased will not be given over to the Second Death.  
“The touch of He Who Would Devour Ra was through no action but his sacrifice; his soul shall remain in the Land of Silence.”

Atem blinked, stunned. 

_A reprieve …?_

But Osiris continued; and now his voice was like the grave.

“For the deaths, for torment; these things will be punished nonetheless. Even the most witless of mortals know the Law.  
“Be still, Atem, and accept your fate. And know that this is as it must be.”

The judges rose as one; stepped from their scaly thrones, eyes alight with grim purpose, and converged on Atem’s silent, slight form.

As the curved blades flashed in the ghost-fires, he closed his eyes.


End file.
